TOPIC: Cinema w/ Hollywood movies viable at tiny island?

I live at a small, remote island with a population of around 6500 people. Everyone here watch lots of movies. It's an isolated place and people need something to do at evenings. There are several sellers of illegal copies of movies at the main street, and people are lining up for these, though people have to wait a long time for good quality versions of the movies to arrive.

There is lots of tourism here - around 1000 people at the same time. This island is very unique and has a special culture, so perhaps by giving the cinema a theme of the local art and culture, this would attract tourists to the cinema, and they'd go just for the sake of going to a cinema here.

Would a cinema at this island showing latest Hollywood movies be economically viable? What would be the best way for me to obtain the movies?

In the capital on this country, cinema tickets are usually around 6000 CLP (11 USD). Most prices here are at least double, so I figure reasonable price in this economy would be around 10 000 CLP (18 USD).

I was asking mainly because it is a difficult enough task to give helpful information when we are at least talking about our experiences in the same country. You being in another country makes most of our advice not applicable to your market. Sorry.

You may need to talk to your local Disney, Sony , Fox, Paramount representative and obtain information from there what their screening requirements are. Where I am located single screens do not exist any more. They are generally going around 4 screens to get more variety of films. So you can do say a 20 seats cinema. But depending upon your funds you could do a 50 seat cinema and then 3 20 seats cinemas. Which would give you 110 seats. There use to be a rule of thumb 200 seats for every 10,000 people. So you would be approximately in that ratio. But talk to your studio distributors and get their take on minimum screening requirements, supply of new releases, costings first. And make sure they are happy to support it.

just for the record: single screen theatres do indeed exist and believe it or not people still want to open them and they are free to do so. They will get films (product) depending on their proximity to competition, the equipment that the theatre has (better t be digital), and the market the theatre is in. However: all one screens will face the challenges oft discussed and you'll be hard pressed to find one theatre operator who'd advise you to go with one screen. In Chile/ on an island/ population of 6500, 70 seats?/ considering the need for digital projection I think if you were seeking to be first run Hollywood DCP compliant... it would seem like a stretch. Things we do not know: what do they use in more remote portions of Chile? There may be other forms of projection as in India. Lastly.... a small viewing room that uses DVD and a video projection is something you see in many parts of the USA and the world. Good luck.